nTop announces nTop 5 release and adds five integration partners
June 27, 2024
Engineering design software company nTop (formerly known as nTopology), headquartered in New York City, USA, has announced the launch of nTop 5. Materialise, Autodesk, Hexagon, Intact Solutions, and cloudfluid have all built nTop interoperability into their software in an effort to provide users with a better end-to-end process for high-performance designs across simulation and manufacturing applications. This latest update, recently highlighted the company’s inaugural Computational Design Summit at RAPID + TCT, also features a new kernel that enables designs with greater precision and accelerates common design operations.
“For over ten years, our mission at nTop has been to help high-performance engineering teams design beyond the limits of traditional software,” said Bradley Rothenberg, co-founder and CEO, nTop. “Our customers have amazed us with the products they’ve developed in nTop – from super-efficient heat exchangers, to ultra-lightweight components for spaceflight and aeronautics, to patient-matched implants that enhance bone fusion, and more forgiving, high-performance golf clubs.
“nTop 5 is a leap forward in implicit modelling technology and the integration of our new ecosystem partners will expand what our customers will be able to create while streamlining workflows using the tools they know and rely on.”
Last year, nTop introduced nTop Core, a developer library for software partners that enables their applications to natively read and query information within nTop models. This latest expansion to the developer ecosystem includes mechanical simulation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and build preparation tools with the above mentioned integration partners.
Materialise Magics
Materialise Magics is 3D data and build preparation software and a primary tool on the pathway to production in Additive Manufacturing. This integration is anticipated to accelerate the transition from design to manufacturing by reducing build preparation and slicing times of high-performance parts through the direct import of nTop designs into Magics. Once inside Magics, users can prepare and validate the build parameters, and generate optimised toolpaths. This integration will be available in early access to select companies in Q3 of 2024 with a broader release in 2025.
“At Materialise, we believe that the future of 3D printing lies in seamlessly handling large and highly complex files, and our partnership with nTop is a pivotal step in that direction,” said Udo Eberlein, Vice President of Software, Materialise. “By integrating nTop’s implicit modeling kernel with our Magics software and NxG Build Processor, we are significantly enhancing the efficiency and reliability of the design-to-manufacture process. This collaboration not only eliminates existing limitations but also accelerates the development of innovative 3D printing applications, enabling engineers to bring their high-performance designs to life with unprecedented ease and speed.”
Autodesk Fusion
Implicit interoperability with Autodesk Fusion enables nTop users to perform a variety of downstream tasks in Fusion and more easily complete the design-to-manufacturing workflow. nTop users can transition their designs to Autodesk’s comprehensive CAD/CAM tools using the nTop Connector add-in for Fusion. Once inside Fusion, users can interrogate a model, integrate implicit models into larger product assemblies, and prepare models for production with the advanced manufacturing toolsets. The nTop Connector is available today in the Fusion App Store, available to all Fusion and nTop users at no additional cost.
“As they should, today’s product designers and manufacturers expect state-of-the-art computational design tools at their fingertips, seamlessly integrated into their CAD workflows,” said Stephen Hooper, VP of Design & Manufacturing product development, Autodesk. “Connecting nTop and Fusion delivers on that expectation, putting high-performance implicit models designed in nTop where engineering teams naturally work with them.”
Hexagon scSTREAM
Advancements in the design of heat sinks, chill plates, manifolds, and filters require accurate and rapid CFD analysis. In an effort to meet this need, nTop has partnered with Hexagon to integrate data from nTop models into Cradle CFD scSTREAM, a CFD application created specifically for thermal management of large and complex assemblies. scSTREAM is said to reduce manual processes by 80% and offer 5-10X faster calculation speeds. The combination of scSTREAM and nTop Core relies on a direct data transfer technology for implicit models intended to eliminate the need to simplify or compromise users’ design integrity to achieve fast, accurate results.
Intact.Simulation
Intact.Simulation allows users to load designs directly from nTop without any loss in fidelity and perform linear elastic, modal, and thermal analysis solved directly on the implicit model. This allows for faster iterations and the ability to analyse designs containing lattices and other highly complex geometries.
cloudfluid
To address growing interest in advanced design strategies that improve the performance of heat exchangers and manifolds, cloudfluid provides a solution for performing CFD analysis on products containing complex geometric features. With this integration, cloudfluid can import *.implicit models from nTop, set up the simulation on the model without meshing, and compute the results quickly using cloud-based GPU processing.
